In 1948, approximately one student out of seven in the public high schools was studying a modern foreign language; in 1962 the ratio was one to every four—2.4 million MFL enrollments in a total high school population of 9.8 million.1 Contrary to popular belief, this gain began long before the launching of the first Sputnik startled the nation into a searching examination of its educational system, particularly in science and foreign language. There has, in fact, been an annual increase in the ratio of language enrollments to total high-school enrollment from 1948 to the present day, though the rate of increase rose sharply in 1959, after Sputnik and after the passage of the National Defense Education Act of 1958.